I took Billy to a new vet this morning. It was a bizarre experience. First I'll say that it only cost me $77 which is kind of crazy with the amount of blood work they did. Billy's going to eventually have surgery to remove the growth on his leg, so I'm sure that will cost me, but, I'm used to a run of the mill vet visit costing about $250.

The vet spent a good hour and a bit with me. He showed me some bacteria from Billy's chin under the microscope. He drew me a complicated diagram of the relationship between liver function tests, epilepsy, phenobarbital and cushing's syndrome. After the first half hour I was thinking, what's this guy's angle? Why is he spending so much time on us? Is he lonely? Is he just generally long-winded? What does he want from me?

My point in writing about this? Well, it made me think -- why am I so suspicious when someone is nice? That's a fucked up way of looking at things. Am I the only one who does this? Are we so used to being treated badly by people? Is that our normal? Last week I was told that I should challenge my perspective. I should question why I view things the way that I do. Not to say that my viewpoint is wrong. But I have to wonder if my viewpoint is practical, or if it's a construct of my bias/judgment/self-judgment/tendency to think in terms of right and wrong/tendency to think in terms of black and white. It's interesting to question these things. Really, there is no wrong or right. It's merely perception. Where does this perception come from? Think nature vs. nurture. How much is due to genetics and how much is due to the events in our lives thus far?

So many questions. No answers. I dig that.